Student world news wrap

Thousands of students across Bangladesh staged protests and sit-ins after clashes at the country’s top university left at least 100 people injured. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at Dhaka University students fighting what they consider “discriminatory” government job quotas in favour of special groups.

Students are angry at the government’s decision to set aside 56 percent of civil service jobs for the families of veterans from the 1971 war of independence and for disadvantaged minorities. That leaves the majority of university graduates competing for only 44 percent of the jobs. Read more on the Economic Times site.

Nigerian student receives admission letters from 19 top universities in the world

Seventeen-year-old Oludamilola Oluwadara Adekeye has reportedly been accepted by 19 of the world’s top universities including Yale, Stanford, Columbia and the London School of Economics. While speaking with CNN, Oluwadamilola, who is a student of Brighton College, Abu Dhabi said she applied to 20 universities and was accepted by 19 of them. – Read the story on the Pulse site.

From a workstation prototype that will improve the working conditions for operating room nurses to an infrastructure system designed to protect communities from natural disasters, interdisciplinary teams of Virginia Tech students are finding creative solutions to real-world problems. Innovative projects by four undergraduate student teams received support through funding provided by the university’s Creativity and Innovation Strategic Growth Area – Read more about these projects on the Augusta Free Press site

Low-cost science kit helps African students to experiment

Having access to basic equipment like test tubes and centrifuges to perform simple science experiments is a problem faced by many African students that USC Dornsife chemistry graduate student Betsy Melenbrink is working to solve. Her and the rest of her international team of materials science graduate students aim to help fill the void by building a low-cost electrochemistry device.

The group has designed and built a device known as a potentiostat, the hardware used in most electrochemistry experiments. Bright green, small enough to fit in a hand and resembling a video game controller, it’s now in early testing at African universities in Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya. A wider rollout is planned later this year. – Read more on the Phys Org site.